Hacker News Reader

Comment by phinnaeus | Hacker News Reader

> A group of pilots who had run out of hot cross buns on Good Friday decided to fly to the closest open bakery on Rottnest Island.

I can't believe that a bakery (the one bakery) on Rotto would be the closest open bakery...

View on HN

I don't know about Australia, but in Poland, on Easter and Christmass, I can easily believe there would be no single bakery open in the whole country.

Also, it was before google maps, so they couldn't just google nearest open bakeries. It might as well have been "nearest open bakery they were aware of". Funny how modern tech made the terms "closest open" and "closest known open" virtually the same.

I would have taken the yellow book and called every bakery listed there to check if they were open. I think sometimes the impact of technology is overstated :)

"Closest open" was virtually the same as "closest known open", back when "flying" could only mean "I've got a fast horse".

You sat down next to the phone with the phone book for ten minutes.

In the state of Victoria, Good Friday is one of the two-and-a-half restricted trading days where shops aren’t allowed to open, except for a few categories, and, simplifying, small businesses: <https://business.vic.gov.au/business-information/public-holi...>.

(In practice, almost all bakeries will be small enough they could open, but I think most won’t.)

I know South Australia has even more restrictions about when businesses can open, legal and customary. I imagine Western Australia to be more like South Australia in such ways than like Victoria, but I’ve not been there and don’t really know.

And that’s these days. Back in the mid ’80s, I’m almost surprised there was a single bakery open in the entire country.

I haven't lived in Australia in many years so I don't know what it's like now, but back in the '80s when the first Rotto Bun Run happened I have no doubt that most businesses in Perth would have been closed for Good Friday. To hear the story of why the one on Rottnest was open you might have to fly there yourself :)

Bet the fuel was cheap back then too!

We no longer require a bun crisis to lodge this flight plan. Plenty of flights are made to Rotto for a sausage roll, any time of the year.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com